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Featured Item:
WEALTH VIRTUES
A Guide to acquire more money than you spend and to save more
money than you owe
List Price: $24.95Amazon.com's Price: $21.33 You Save: $3.62 (15%)as of 09/05/2010 15:57 EDT
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.1092
EAN: 9781581826029
ISBN: 1581826028
Label: Cumberland House Publishing
Manufacturer: Cumberland House Publishing
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: October 01, 2008
Publisher: Cumberland House Publishing
Studio: Cumberland House Publishing
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Selig Harry Lefkowitz, alias Big Jack Zelig, was New York's first great gangster boss. Like many of his pre-Volstead contemporaries, his historical impact has been overshadowed by Al Capone and Murder Inc. He is listed in today's crime anthologies primarily because four members of his gang, along with corrupt cop Charles Becker, died in the electric chair for the July 1912 murder of gambler Herman Rosenthal.
In New York City from 1908 to 1912, however, Zelig inspired admiration and fear, and he was synonymous with the word gangster. New York editor Herbert Bayard Swope recalled that "The Starker (Yiddish for 'Big Boss') threw terror into the heart of the New York underworld like no one has before or since."
Irony and tragedy often join forces, but the way they combined in the Becker-Rosenthal affair is harrowing. Becker's job was to eradicate the Manhattan gangs. Yet the city's most powerful gangster, Jack Zelig, was prepared to testify for him and save him from the electric chair. But when Zelig was murdered before he could take the stand, Becker was consequentially doomed.
The question is, Who ordered Zelig killed -- and why?
The answer is revealed by Rose Keefe, who follows Zelig's story from his childhood in New York's Russian-Jewish slums to his enlistment in the Manhattan gang wars (1905-10) to his ascendancy to the top of the New York underworld. Keefe reveals that Zelig's murder was a political assassination, not retaliation for an alleged robbery, as legend has claimed. For the first time, the truth about who ordered Herman Rosenthal murdered, and why, will be revealed.
Based on dozens of interviews and years of painstaking research, The Starker introduces readers to a story from New York's criminal past that is dazzling in its audacity and criminal in the success of the people responsible for the murders in covering up their own crimes.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
It is difficult to find the proper perspective for a story like this. It takes place 100 years ago, at this writing, and life was so different that as much energy must go to recreating the times as to actually explaining the principals in the story.
Life around the turn of the 20th century was a rugged ordeal. The times in which Jack Zelig, Dopey Fein and the gangsters and policeman did business was a wide open period where bigotry was out in the open, not only against Jews, but Italians, ... Read More
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This is a well-written story, not merely of The Starker, Jack Zelig, but of the entire New York City Jewish crime scene in the early years of the twentieth century. The prose, like its subjects, is red-blooded and robust, and the author somehow even makes one feel pathos for cold-blooded killers. So many individuals move in and out of this book that a cast of characters list would have been helpful. Also, it is improper to use the Christian imagery of Judas-like behavior to describe the betrayal of one ... Read More
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I didn't even know I was interested in the career of Big Jack Zelig until I looked the first few chapters. By then I was hooked and had to finish the book. And I'm happy I did! Rose Keefe paints a compelling and thorough portrait of both Big Jack himself and the world he came from, making The Starker a must-read for anyone interested in the era of the Jewish gangsters.
Rating: -
Little I can add to the accolades already justifiably heaped here upon THE STARKER. Rose Keefe's formidable writing and research capabilities, her uncanny knack for uncovering century-old records and eyewitnesses, have culled her another masterpiece. Making a smooth and comfortable transition from the Prohibition combat zones of Chicago's beer wars to the gaslit streets of 1910s New York City, Rose details the suave yet tough persona of America's first modern gangleader and his own damning testimony which ... Read More
Rating: -
Rose Keefe has an amazing skill for bringing a long overlooked part of NYC's underworld history back to life. The Starker pulls you in page by page as the layers of time are pulled away from the incredible figure Big Jack Zelig and the role he played in his community and in events that were outside of his control as in the Becker-Rosenthal affair. Keep up the good work Rose and I know you will score another home run with your new project on Benny Fein!
Alana
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